Quotes
March 25, 2008 by Bryson Nitta
Lest we forget some of the more memorable moments in environmentalism (or in this blog), I’ve decided to create a page of quotes that I use in my blog, as well as quotes from people who have replied to my posts in a particularly witty, eloquent, or just all around excellent manner.
* * *
“Acts of ecotage big or small, but instead of tearing down the things we don’t like, we use it to build the world we want. The point is not to wait for the powers that be to give us permission to do it.”
From:
blog 52, commenting on ELF Update
“All the candle vigils in the world isn’t going to stop the environmental problems in the world.”
From:
Cassidy, comment on Ecoterrorism? Or Peacemaking?
“ELF is the latest reaction to the obscenely out-of-control
consumer mania brought on by our good old buddies—the corporoate elite.ELF is merely the symptom, not the underlying disease crippling humans and the earth.”
From:
Patrick Cunningham, comment on Elf Strikes Again?
“In a dry wind like this, snow and ice can pass directly into the air as a gas without having first melted to water. This process is called sublimation; tonight the snow in the yard and the ice in the creek sublime. A breeze buffets my palm held a foot from the wall. A wind like this does my breathing for me; it engenders something quick and kicking in my lungs. Pliny believed the mares of the Portuguese used to raise their tails to the wind, “and turn them full against it, and so conceive that genital air instead of natural seed: in such sort, as they become great withal, and quicken in their time, and bring forth foals as swift as the wind, but they live not above three years.” Does the white mare Itch in the dell in the Adams’ woods up the road turn to this wind with white-lashed, lidded eyes? A single cell quivers at a windy embrace; it swells and splits, it bubbles into a raspberry; a dark clot starts to throb. Soon something perfect is born. Something wholly new rides the wind, something fleet and fleeting I’m likely to miss.
“To sleep, spiders and fish; the wind won’t stop, but the house will hold. To shelter, starlings and coot; bow to the wind.”
From:
Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Annie Dillard; Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
“The desert will still be here in the spring. And then comes another thought. When I return will it be the same? Will I be the same? Will anything ever quite be the same again? If I return.”
From:
Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire. Edward Abbey and Ecoterrorism
